


Camisado

by jadedace



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama, Finn-centric, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memory Loss, Mystery, Not Beta Read, Not Really Character Death, Really emphasizing the happy ending tag here, Romance, not really suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-12-18 20:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11882088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedace/pseuds/jadedace
Summary: He does not know where he is. He does not know how he got there or why the world around him is in shambles. He does not remember his past or his present. He does not know who he is. He only remembers the voice, and he won’t stop until he finds out who it belongs to.





	1. Chapter One

**Camisado** , [kam- _uh_ - **sey** -doh]  _noun_ **1.**  a surprise attack occurring at night or at daybreak, when the enemy are supposed to be asleep.

 

* * *

 

It’s raining when he finally comes to—big, heavy drops, the kind that go straight through your clothes and soak deep into your flesh, hit the ground with an almost aggressive force. He is cold, but not from the rain. _Shock,_ his mind suggests, but he is not sure how it knows. At first all he feels is the cold. He shivers and shakes against the ground, and curls inward to preserve body heat. The movement brings a new sensation: pain. His back aches and his arms are sore and bloody at the crooks of his elbows. He does not want to move lest he discover more discomfort. As he lays there, he gradually becomes aware of other things. The grass beneath him is scorched and smells like ozone. The dark sky above is obscured by smoldering chunks of dark metal, visible only when lightning snakes through the thick clouds. He is lying among a field of dark wreckage, about fifteen meters across at first estimate. At the edges of the field are tall evergreens, some missing branches and smoking as well.

The rain begins to pound harder and he knows he must find shelter. With great effort he drags himself upright. His whole body protests, his head and arms most of all. There is a moment where he almost passes out from the pain. He leans back against the largest of the metal chunks, shivering harder when the metallic coldness seeps through his soaking clothes. 

He does not know where he is. He does not know how he got there or why the world around him is in shambles. He does not remember his past or his present. He does not know who he is.

This thought is frightening, but he squashes the fear deep down. He feels he has been trained to do so, as he does it with ease. He is not afraid. He cannot afford to be, if he is going to get out of here alive. 

_Stay calm, stay calm._

The rain is letting up now, and he can see sunlight peeking through the clouds. It illuminates the wreckage and he sees now the bodies heaped upon each other, their white armor plates scorched and blackened. 

_Tens of stormtroopers streaming into the reactor room, blasters raised. A man in green and tan fatigues is shouting at him. There is another shout—no, a scream—echoing in the chamber around them. The man in fatigues wants to leave, before the explosives detonate. The screaming voice begs him to come back. He makes a decision._

The memory hits him like a sledgehammer. He is breathing heavily, swept up in the visceral recollection. And it is a memory, he’s sure. Perhaps from moments before whatever explosion formed this wreckage field occurred. He remembers nothing else, but he has a sudden urge to find the screaming voice. It was so desperate for his return. How could he abandon it now?

The rain is gone. There is more light dappling the field. He stands, forcing himself to work through the pain. With a determined attitude he begins to search. 

It is not long into his search that he hears voices. They are quiet, somber, carried on the slight breeze that dries his soaking clothes. But they are not the screaming voice. Are they friend or foe? Heart racing in his chest, he looks for a weapon to defend himself with. The blaster of a nearby stormtrooper glistens in the grass and he lunges for it. Pain is secondary to survival right now. Blaster in hand, he army crawls behind the nearest piece of twisted metal just as the source of the voices emerges from the tree line. 

There are seven of them, some in bright orange jumpsuits, others in fatigues. They look very close to the man of his single memory. Perhaps they are friends, but he cannot afford to take chances. 

“Don’t move!” he shouts, jumping to his feet and leveling the muzzle of the blaster at the group. They all reach for their own side arms, but freeze when they catch sight of him. They look surprised, at first. Then a dark-haired woman in a jumpsuit smiles broadly. 

“Finn!” she takes a step towards him, but he cocks the blaster. 

“I said don’t move!”

She looks confused, but obliges and puts her hands up. “Finn, it’s me. It’s Jess. We’re friends?”

He does not know if she is telling the truth. She calls him Finn. Is that his name? Finn? He likes the sound of it. And, in his memory, he seemed to be working with the people in green and tan. He lowers his blaster. Jess lowers her arms and the group relaxes. There is relief on their faces.

Jess still looks worried as she walks up to him. Her eyes travel to his arms, which are bleeding now. The sticky redness plasters his shirt—green and tan, of course—to his skin. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” Finn answers truthfully. “I don’t remember.”

“Do you remember anything?”

_Finn runs back into the sea of stormtroopers, away from the man calling him back. He has to find the source of the scream. “Slip!” he shouts as he runs._

“…No,” Finn says. It is only mostly a lie. For some reason, he does not fully trust her just yet.

The others have approached Jess. There is another human with a beard in a jumpsuit, and the rest are in the green and tan uniform. They are alien and human and one droid—an orange and white BB unit. There is concern on every face. Even the droid manages to look upset…somehow. 

“It’s okay. We’re just glad you’re alive. Let’s get you back to camp, yeah?” Jess says. “Those wounds have to hurt.”

Finn had forgotten about them, in all honesty. But now that she has mentioned them they are starting to smart. He still wants to find the screaming voice, but he cannot without revealing he remembers something. His hands are tied. Finally, he nods. “Okay,” he agrees. He vows to come back later. 

Camp is only a short transport ride away. Finn spends it watching the trees go by, hunched in on himself. These people say they are his friends, but he feels out of place among them. 

“Poe is going to be so glad to see you again,” Jess is saying.

“Who is Poe?”

Jess’s face falls again, but she forces a smile. “He’s in charge. He’s a friend, too.”

Looks are exchanged among the jumpsuits and the fatigues. Jess relays something quietly over a radio. Finn doesn’t understand them. He goes back to looking out the window. 

After only a few more minutes they arrive at camp, a small ring of tents thrown together under the trees. In a clearing not far away are six X Wing fighters, one of which is painted black. More humans and aliens mill about, wearing the same orange and green and tan that Finn has grown used to seeing.

“Finn!” His name is shouted for the second time that day, this time by a man with a sharp jaw line and dark curls. He is wearing a jumpsuit like Jess’s, but the patches on the sleeves are different. More abundant, more important. _He is in charge. He must be Poe._

Finn goes to attention on instinct, sharply saluting Poe. Poe returns the salute, hastily, before throwing his arms around Finn. Finn is taken aback, and wonders if this is proper etiquette among them. 

“Gods, it’s good to see you alive.”

Finn doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “Yes.” 

Poe gives him a weird look, then glances over Finn’s shoulder at Jess.

“Finn…Do you know who I am?” Poe asks, staring hard into Finn’s eyes.

“Yes,” Finn says, and is glad he knows the answer for once. “You are my commanding officer.”

The man smiles, but his shoulders fall, belying any joy at hearing Finn correctly identify him. Finn wonders what he said wrong. Poe claps him on the shoulder, faking a good mood. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Poe takes Finn to one of the many forest green tents, this one obviously doubling as a makeshift infirmary. At the medic’s request he peels of his soggy and blood-soaked shirt. He notices that his skin is covered in scars; two of them, a long swatch on his back and a large circle on is chest, look recent. He wonders how he got them.

His arms are in much worse condition than he expected. Both elbows are pocked with an array of pinpricks, likely from syringes. Each arm bears a large wound, perfectly circular, about half a centimeter in diameter. They spill a continuous stream of blood down his forearms. The medic looks horrified. 

“How did you get these?”

“I don’t remember,” Finn repeats. He looks to Poe, thinking that perhaps his CO might have insight, but Poe is a few meters away talking to Jess and the man with a beard. 

“—going back to look for more survivors. We just wanted to get Finn back as soon as possible.”

“No, no, that was the right thing to do. Take BB-8 and the transport and do a more thorough search. We’ll be good here.”

“Are you sure?” Jess levels a look at Poe. Poe runs a hand through his hair and offers another smile, this one as unconvincing as the last. 

“Fine, Jess. Just fine.” The two glance at Finn, and Finn quickly looks away, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping. “Report to me when you get back.”

Jess salutes and is gone. Poe returns to Finn’s side. 

“Sorry about that. We’re still trying to clean up this whole operation.”

“What happened here?” Finn asks. He still has no idea where they are or what caused the explosion. His thoughts wonder back to the screaming voice. He has a sudden urge to ask if he can go pick through the wreckage with Jess. He bites his tongue. 

Poe sits down on a cot beside him as the medic bandages his arms. “We are part of the Resistance. We are fighting against a fascist regime known as the First Order. That field of metal was a secret weapons cache of theirs. We were sent here, a planet called Veralt, to destroy it.”

Finn knows the First Order. The name puts a sour taste in his mouth. “What happened to me? Why can’t I remember anything?”

Poe rubs the back of his neck. “Well, see, that’s a good question. We’ve been here for two weeks and you were missing for most of it. Vanished during recon. We went in to find you a week later, after we disabled their defenses. Then you and Hexx, the ground commander, were going to blow the facility from the inside. But Hex came back without you, said you ran back inside…and then the detonators went off. 

“I was actually hoping you could tell me why you left Hexx…” Poe trails off, waiting for Finn to fill in the blanks, perhaps hoping that the retelling would jog his memory. Finn doesn’t want to mention screaming voice, for some reason. But this is his CO. Surely he can trust Poe?

“I think I ran back for someone, but I don’t know.” Finn says. He refuses to name the voice. 

“Do you remember what happened to you while the First Order had you?”

“Not at all.”

Poe nods, but Finn can tell he is frustrated. 

“I’m sorry,” he tries to apologize, but Poe waves him off. 

“It’s not…I don’t blame you. Something happened and it wasn’t your fault.” He smiles, and it is genuine this time. “I’m just glad you’re alive. We leave for home in the morning, and then we’ll get you all fixed up. Just rest for now.”

Finn does not want to rest. He wants to find the voice. “Is that an order?”

Poe finds this funny. “Yes, if an order is what it will take for you to take it easy.” And then he’s gone, and the medic has finished bandaging his arms, and Finn is alone. But it’s not new; Finn thinks he has been alone since he first came back to camp. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm going to try to post a chapter every Friday. Thank you guys for the encouragement to write more. I'm really hoping I can stick with this. :)

Jess and her party return at dusk a few hours later, and they are not alone. There are four more people with them—stormtroopers, judging by their armor. None of them are wearing helmets, but the white chest plates and vambraces give them away. One of the stormtroopers, a dark skinned man with a scar on his right cheek, stares Finn straight in the eye as he is led through the camp. His glare is hot enough to melt transparisteel. Despite himself, Finn shivers. He gets the feeling he and this stormtrooper have met before. He cannot begin to imagine how. 

Poe greets them at the camp entrance. The BB unit happily rolls to his side, chirping. Finn is too far away to hear what they are saying, but it undoubtedly revolves around the stormtroopers. Finn finds himself pondering where they came from; he had not seen or heard anything besides Jess and the other Resistance fighters when he’d woken up in the wreckage field. But this was good news, wasn’t it? Perhaps the voice he remembered was also back there. He _has_ to find a way to get back to the wreckage field before they leave tomorrow morning. Just to make sure. 

The stormtroopers are herded into one of the tents, and this ends the excitement in camp for the night. One by one the Resistance fighters bid each other good night and retire to their tents. Finn lies down on his cot, feigning sleep but remaining alert. He will need as much time as possible to make it to the wreckage and back on foot in one night. 

Poe comes to the infirmary soon after, perhaps to check in on Finn. Finn lies still and keeps his breathing even, praying that his charade is believable. The other man sighs, a melancholy sound, before turning and leaving Finn alone once more. 

Slowly, activity in the camp grinds to a halt. The noise and chatter fade to the sounds of a silent forest, save for the occasional boot shift from the sentries. Finn waits until he knows the resident medic is surely asleep before rising slowly off his cot. His body protests, but he is able to keep quiet despite the pain. With a practiced ease that Finn does not remember practicing, he creeps from the infirmary tent and around the camp’s perimeter.

“Where are you going?” the voice does not belong to someone Finn knows. He looks around and catches sight of the scarred stormtrooper from before, bound in shackles inside one of the tents, once again glaring daggers at him through a rip in the canvas. The other stormtroopers sleep obliviously beside him. Finn aims to ignore him, but the trooper persists. “I’ll start yelling if you don’t answer me, ’87.”

Finn does not know what “87” means, but it jars something deep inside him. He does not want to stop, but he cannot be caught. He does not think Poe will be happy that he left the infirmary. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Are you now.” It is a statement, not a question. 

“Do we know each other?” Finn is anxious to get moving before someone becomes suspicious. 

The trooper sniffs. “We used to.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Unless you wanted to right some wrongs and help us out of these shackles.”

Finn is out of patience. “Yell all you want. I have places to be.” And before the trooper can respond, Finn is gone, keeping low to the ground to avoid the sentries posted at the camp’s entrance. They do not expect someone to be sneaking out, and in the end, the trooper doesn’t yell. The camp is none the wiser to his escape. 

Without a transport, it is a long walk back to the wreckage field. Finn remembers the transport heading southwest on its way back, so he heads northeast in a straight line. It takes him an hour to reach the field and he is exhausted by the time he gets there. He thinks about sitting down, but the knowledge that his absence might be discovered at any moment pushes him onward. He scours the field, searching under metal scrap and just inside the tree line. He pulls the helmets off the fallen troopers and digs deep in the ground, on the off chance someone was buried in the explosion. He finds nothing that jogs his memory. No face that he can put to the screaming voice. 

Finn’s arms are bleeding again, soaking through the bandages. He sits back on his haunches to rest. He has searched the entire field and found nothing. Where ever the screaming voice was, it is not here. Disappointed, Finn heads for home.

He is right that his presence did not go unnoticed. When he returns to camp he is greeted by Poe, who is pacing through the center of camp. Jess sits off to the side, clearly trying to keep him calm. 

“He probably just went for a walk. This is all new for him, remember?”

“Precisely why he should have stayed inside camp! I should have stayed with him, I should have made sure—“

“That I didn’t wander off?” Finn finishes Poe’s sentence. The look of relief that floods Poe’s face rivals the one he gave Finn earlier that day. He makes a move like he wants to hug Finn again, but stops halfway. 

“There you are.”

“Here I am.” Finn tries to smile. Maybe he won’t be in so much trouble for deserting his bunk if he plays his cards right. Poe seems more worried than angry. 

“I’m going to leave you two to this,” Jess says, and heads back to her tent. Poe waits until she’s gone to turn back to Finn.

“Why did you leave?” he says. 

Finn digs the heel of his boot into the dirt. “I was trying to remember.” A half-truth. “I didn’t go far.” A bold-faced lie. “I’m sorry I worried you.” 

“There are still potential enemy combatants in these woods. You can’t just walk out and leave camp while deployed.”

“I know. Or, I remember. Now. It won’t happen again.”

“Well, no, because we leave tomorrow. But you understand I can’t leave you alone tonight.”

This is alright with Finn. He has completed his search and found nothing. He is ready to rest. “I understand.”

———

Finn wakes the next morning to the sound of a camp being torn down. He remembers Poe talking about heading for home, but it doesn’t sink in until just then that they are leaving the planet. A spike of white-hot panic shoots through him; he still has not found the source of the voice in his memory. 

_Just tell Poe_ , a part of him thinks. Perhaps his CO will understand. Maybe even help him locate the voice. But a bigger, paranoid part of him rejects this. The voice is his secret. It is his only memory and he is not sure if he should share it with people that he doesn’t yet fully know. Poe said he ran back into the weapons cache; he must have had a reason not to tell them before. So he will stay silent until he remembers that reason. 

But he is not abandoning the voice. Whoever it was needed him. He wonders if he’ll be able to sneak out of camp one more time before they leave. Then he remembers returning last night, and glances over to see Poe lacing up his boots on one of the infirmary cots. No chance of that. 

_Tell Poe or abandon hope_ seem to be Finn’s options. Neither is appealing. Abandoning hope is worse. 

Finn sits up in his cot and scrubs a hand over his face. “Hey, Poe…”

Poe looks up. “What is it, Finn?”

But in the end, Finn’s paranoia gets the better of him. He pulls himself off his cot and stretches, feeling better after a good night’s rest than he was yesterday. He can’t reveal his secret voice. Not yet. “Is there anything I can do to help?”


	3. Chapter Three

D’Qar and Veralt could be identical twins. In fact, if Finn hadn’t watched the ship drop out of hyperspace, he never would have realized they were separate planets. The same cloudy sky and the same thick forest cover both worlds, and the air smells identical. 

The only difference is the sounds. Veralt was eerily calm, the kind of calm that comes with being watched unknowingly. D’Qar is filled with activity. Pilots swoop through the sky, doing touch and goes and practicing aerial maneuvers. On the ground, Resistance personnel dart about like worker bees, always something more to be doing. The central hangar is a proverbial hive of activity. 

Almost as soon as they land, Finn is whisked away to the med bay. They put him through a battery of tests which are only mildly uncomfortable. Finn’s three days of memory are filled to the bring with discomfort; he finds the poking and prodding easy enough to bear in comparison. He only hopes the tests will be worth it. 

He sits on an exam table, hands in his lap, arms freshly bandaged. A medic is flipping through his chart while a medical droid draws another vial of blood from the back of his hand. Finally, the medic sighs. 

“I can’t find anything wrong.”

Finn blinks. “What?”

The medic looks back down at the holopad. “No signs of head trauma, no signs of neck injury, no abnormalities within the blood or cerebral spinal fluid. Your reflexes and enzyme levels are normal. Organ function is all normal. In fact, you’re in even better condition than when we discharged you a few months ago.”

“I was here a few months ago?” 

“Yes,” the medic clears her throat. “I’m sure you noticed the scars on your chest and back. You had to heal up from those. That was a long stint in a bacta suit for you.”

Finn really, really hates not remembering. 

“But you’re fine. By all medical accounts, there is no reason for your memory loss. We’ll run some more tests and hopefully something will turn up, but…”

“But?”

“It’s possible we might not find anything. And if we can’t find anything, there is no way we can help you regain your memories. You’ll just have to wait for them to come back on your own.”

Finn sighs. He had been so hopeful he’d be able to remember who the voice belonged to. Now he’s on a planet he doesn’t recall, light years away from the only connection to his past that he remembers, and he’s not sure what to do. He can’t give up looking, and he certainly won’t give up trying to remember, but he does not know where to go from here. 

“Thank you, doctor,” he says, and pushes himself off the exam table. The medic gives him a sympathetic smile. 

“I’m sorry we can’t do more to help you. Would you like help getting back to your room?”

Finn shakes his head. “I can manage, thanks.”

He leaves the medical bay with no idea what to do. He can head back to his room and hope it might jog some memories, but his room is so… _bare._ There are clothes, a brown jacket, a picture of Poe (did all Resistance fighters keep an image of their CO in their quarters?), holocards from someone named Rey that he’s already read through. But other than that, nothing stands out to him, nothing makes a connection. 

In fact, the closest thing Finn has had to a connection (besides the screaming voice) is the stormtrooper. There was something in the way he talked, the way he looked, that Finn almost remembers. Like a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite grasp. The trooper is familiar. The trooper is Finn’s best bet for remembering. So Finn sets out to find him. 

The base on D’Qar is huge, but mostly empty. The Resistance seems to be in the process of moving, as many rooms are filled with nothing but shapes in the dust where machinery once stood. Maybe that is why Finn’s room is so bare: he’s already packed all his things. Surely his life couldn’t have been so empty as to only produce a few mementos? 

He first wanders to the hangar, completely by accident (did he mention that the base is huge? And twisty?) where he catches sight of Jess and the bearded man—Snap, he heard him called—conversing with a dark-skinned, light haired woman. Jess catches sight of him and waves. Finn almost ignores the invitation, but despite his complete paranoia of just about everyone he’s met, he _likes_ her. She’s kind and patient and doesn’t seem to care that three days ago he was pointing a blaster at her. So Finn shoves his hands in his pockets and crosses the hangar to her group. 

“Finn, this is Karé Kun.” Jess motions to the blonde. Finn waves. 

“Pleasure to meet you…again.” His attempt at humor gets a smile. 

“How’d it go?” Jess asks him. Finn shrugs. 

“Clean bill of health. They can’t find anything wrong.”

“Well that’s good news, isn’t it?”

In any other circumstance, it would be. “I guess. It’d be nice to have a plan to get my memories back.”

“Of course.”

“Sometimes patience is the best medicine,” Karé says sagely.

“I thought that was laughter?” Snap corrects her.

“Not with jokes like Finn’s.”

Finn chuckles. “Was my sense of humor always so bad?”

Karé makes a wishy-washy gesture with her hand. “It could use some work.” 

“So what brings you to our humble hangar?” Jess asks. “Looking for Poe?”

Finn considers asking her where the holding cells are, but guesses that he probably doesn’t have the clearance in his current condition to visit prisoners. On the other hand, considering Poe’s rank, there’s a good chance that where Poe is, there the prisoners might be. “Yeah, actually. I thought he’d be with you.”

“The General wanted to have a chat with him. I think they’re in the south wing. Do you want me to take you there?”

“No, that’s alright. Directions should be fine. I wouldn’t want to take you away from your very important work.” Finn motions to the three of them sitting on storage crates, pointedly doing nothing.

Jess raises an eye brow and smirks. “Is that another attempt at a joke?”

“Maybe. So…directions?”

———

The south wing is another underground maze of duracrete tunnels, but Jess’s directions are thankfully very detailed. It takes Finn no time at all to reach the conference room. He knows its the right conference room, because Poe’s voice is very, very loud even through the door.

“—be too careful,” a female voice is saying. Finn assumes this is the general that Jess referred to. 

“Are you really suggesting Finn is a spy?” Poe is not only very loud, but very angry. Finn is also suddenly angry. Does the Resistance really think he is working with the First Order? Finn feels sick. “General, need I remind you he saved all our lives—“

“And we are grateful to him for that, but there are facts we can’t ignore. Such as the First Order being far more technologically advanced than we thought. Consider Starkiller.”

“Finn helped us shut that down.”

“He was also missing for a whole week—“

“Captured.”

“—he left Hexx to run back into the base for who knows what—”

“After helping set the explosives.” 

“—and then he wondered off into First Order occupied territory without telling anyone.”

“Because he didn’t realize it was First Order occupied territory!”

Hearing how his commanding officer defends him, Finn something warm replaces the sick feeling of before. Finn almost…trusts him.

The woman sighs. “Poe, we aren’t accusing him of anything.”

“Really? Because it sure sounds like you are,” Poe bites out.

“All I’m saying is we don’t know what the First Order could have done to him. This is for his protection as much as it is our own.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, General.” 

“Poe—”

“I have a squadron to debrief.” Poe says it with a tone that very clearly ends the conversation. He storms out the door and almost runs over Finn in his huff. 

“Finn!” 

“Sorry, Poe, I—“

“No, no, don’t apologize. You’re fine. How are you?” Poe puts on a hand on Finn’s shoulder and steers him away from the room he’d just come out of. 

“In perfect condition, medically speaking.”

Poe raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yup. Nothing wrong. Except for the fact that I can’t remember anything, but that’s such a small thing, right?” 

Poe huffs a laugh. “I’m sorry. Is there something I can do to help?”

At first Finn almost turns down the offer. The prisoners have to be kept somewhere in the south wing. Finn just needs a chance to search for them. But wouldn’t things go much quicker if he had help? The mistrust Finn harbored towards Poe just twenty four hours ago has all but vanished in the face of Poe’s argument with the general. So he takes a chance. “I need to see the stormtroopers we captured on Veralt.”

Poe nearly trips over himself. “Why?” 

“I think I know one of them. I don’t know how, but I felt something when he looked at me.”

Poe is frowning. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Listen, I know how it sounds, but I promise you I’m not working with them. I’m just trying to remember any way I can. Maybe you could explain that to General Organa, that I would never associate with the First Order—“

“You already have, Finn.”

Now it’s Finn’s turn to stumble. He blinks at Poe. “What do you mean?”

Poe glances around the corridor, checking to see if they’re alone. “You’re—you _were_ , a stormtrooper.”

Finn feels like he’s been sucker punched. “I wouldn’t work for them willingly.”

“No, no, you’re not like the First Order. You deserted them, you saved me from them, you saved _all of us_ with your knowledge of their planet-destroying base.”

The argument Poe was having with General Organa suddenly makes sense. “But the Resistance still thinks the First Order took me back on Veralt.”

Poe nods. “Yeah. I told the general that was bantha fodder, but, well. We didn’t know about Starkiller base until you told us about it. There’s a lot we don’t know about them. And who knows if they have the technology to brainwash people. We can’t be too careful.”

Finn feels numb. “So what…what happens now?”

“We wait for your memory to come back, and then we put the general’s fears to rest. No one will do anything to you, Finn. You’re a hero. But we can’t underestimate the First Order.”

Finn nods mutely. 

“Hey,” Poe places a hand under Finn’s chin and looks him in the eye, sensing Finn’s distress. “It’s going to be okay. And your memory, it will come back. But we have to find other ways than interrogating the people the general fears you’re working with. Okay?”

_The reactor room is filled with smoke. Hexx stands before him, hands beckoning. “The detonator’s set. We have to go, Finn.” A scream echoes through the corridor. The Resistance, or the voice? Finn knows he will choose the voice. Every time._

_He turns on his heel and runs. “Slip!”_

Maybe General Organa is right. Maybe the First Order did do something to him. Or maybe she is wrong and he is fine. But for now he has to play it safe. And, Finn knows, he has someone he can trust now. “Okay.”


	4. Chapter Four

**** His first night on D’Qar is rough, to say the least. He returns to his bare room and stands in the doorway. The room is impeccably clean and organized; the brown jacket hangs from a chair in the corner, the holocards sit neatly on the desk where he left them. Poe is with him. 

“My room is so…empty,” he says. It troubles him, this barrenness. He wishes there was more on the walls to tell him who he was. Is. He knows nothing of himself except what he has been told—that he’s a hero, that he’s a First Order defector. But the words of praise don’t seem real. They don’t seem like they are for _him._ Who is he, the one who woke up on Veralt with not even a name? The one who the stormtrooper prisoner called “87”? The one who is desperate to find the screaming voice in his only memory? He doesn’t feel like a hero. He feels…lost. 

“You’ve only been with us for a few months. You were filling it.” Poe glances at his photograph on Finn’s desk. The words are loaded and Finn frowns, but says nothing. Soon after Poe leaves, almost reluctantly, and Finn falls onto his mattress, suddenly exhausted.

The next thing Finn knows, he is waking up staring at a duracrete wall. A duracrete wall that is not the wall of his quarters. Startled, Finn takes a step back…and realizes he is standing. He looks around and finds himself in a hallway that looks very familiar. At first, he feels a rush of excitement. Is he remembering something? The excitement fades when he realizes that he was in this very spot only hours before. This is the hallway where Poe almost ran him over after his meeting with the general. 

Now Finn is confused. He looks both ways and sees that he is alone. The lights of the hall are dimmed, telling him it is still night time across the base. So what is he doing here? Poe telling him to lay low springs to mind, and Finn is suddenly aware of just how suspicious it would be to be found in the south wing, at night time, alone. He quickly tucks his head and hastens back to his quarters—

Only to find himself back in the south wing, seemingly mere moments after settling back into his sleep cot. Perhaps sleep walking is a side affect of whatever is causing his memory loss. Finn returns to his quarters yet again, but wakes up a third time in the south wing. This time, as he rushes back to bed, he can see the fluorescent lights above starting to lighten. He has spent the whole night running across the base. This time when he returns to his room, he locks his door. Finn falls onto his mattress just as the sun peaks over the distant treetops.

————

“You look like poodoo,” Karé says when Finn shows up to the mess hall, eyelids drooping. 

“Gee, thanks,” he says, punctuating it with a yawn. “I didn’t sleep well.”

Poe looks immediately concerned. “Bad dreams?”

“No,” Finn shakes his head. “No dreams. But no sleep, either.” 

“I always feel that way after a deployment,” Snap says. “It’s the bed. It’s too wide. I almost miss those stick-thin regulation cots.”

“Really? It’s the noise for me,” Jess says. “All those nights spent straining to hear something in the silence and then back home it seems like the noise never stops.” 

They carry their breakfast out of the mess hall and to the hangar; Poe and his friends, as members of the elite Black Squadron, are never too far from their ships. Something to do with them being the first unit deployed in dangerous times. And Finn, well. He doesn’t seem to have friends outside of Poe’s friends. Not that he minds; Poe and Jess have been with him since he can first remember, and Snap and Karé have welcomed him immediately. But it again makes him wonder about who he was, before he was left without memories. 

They talk together in the hangar beneath the wing of a half-disassembled Y-Wing,about things Finn doesn’t know, making jokes he doesn’t understand. But he tries, goes along with it, in the hopes that something—anything—will trigger a memory. 

Karé is in the middle of discussing a harrowing mission on Nyluth II when the roar of a ship approaching the landing pad cuts her off. She squints out the hangar doors. 

“That sounded like the _Falcon._ ”

Poe stands up, peering over the Y-Wing’s fuselage. “That _was_ the _Falcon_.”

Suddenly Snap and Jess are alert, too. Finn gets the feeling he is supposed to know what this “falcon” is. 

“Is this a ship?” Finn stands, following Poe’s line of sight. Sitting square in the middle of the Resistance landing pad is an ancient, beat up Corellian freighter. It hardly looks space worthy, yet Black Squadron is staring at it like it is the most exciting thing they’ve seen all day. 

“Come one,” Poe says, tapping Finn on the shoulder. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

Poe hops down from the storage crates and takes off at a brisk walk towards the freighter. Finn follows, curious. 

From the freighter steps a Wookiee, and following at his heels is a young woman about Finn’s age. Her face lights up when she catches sight of him. 

“Finn!”

Ah. Someone else he is supposed to know but doesn’t. Finn thinks back to the holocards sitting in his quarters. Is this Rey?

She trots up to them and takes Finn’s hands, squeezing his fingers. “I came as soon as my master would allow. It’s so good to see you again!” 

Finn almost reflexively says “You, too,” but catches himself in time. “Are you Rey?”

The woman’s smile falters and she glances at Poe. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Finn shakes his head. “I’m sorry—“

“Don’t be,” Rey shrugs. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Yes, I’m Rey. Did Poe tell you about me?”

“I read your holocards. Were we friends?”

“Good friends,” she pauses and sniffs the air. “Oh my gosh, is it breakfast time? Can we get food? I’m starving.”

Jess, Snap, and Karé, all having finished their morning meal, melt away, leaving Finn with Poe and Rey. They make their way back to the mess hall. 

“So, you’re not a member of Black Squadron too, are you?” He says it half as a joke, and it’s taken that way. Poe smirks and Rey laughs as she piles enough food on her tray for a whole army. They take a seat in the mess hall, close to the entrance.

“She’s a good enough pilot to be,” Poe says, and Rey elbows him. 

“Oh, stop.” She turns back to Finn, taking a sip of her breakfast broth. “Chewwie lets me know regularly all I’m doing wrong, and Master Skywalker won’t stop telling me how much I still have to learn.”

Finn tilts his head at the mention of this Master Skywalker. Rey has mentioned him in her holocards, but just who he is remains a mystery. “Master Skywalker?”

Rey nods and swallows. “The last of the Jedi. He’s training me.”

“You’re a Jedi?” Finn is in awe. It is strange what he knows; history, politics, but nothing personal. It is less of a memory and more just an inherent knowledge. He knows of the Jedi, just as he knew of the First Order, but he is unsure of how.

“Well, not yet. But I will be,” Rey says around a mouthful of food. She moans. “Oh my gods I forgot how good actual food tastes.”

Poe looks amused. “What does Skywalker have you eating?”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “Military rations. If I have to rehydrate one more meal I might die. It’s too close to what I ate on Jakku.” 

“So do you have a lightsaber?” Finn is eager to know more. 

“Oh yeah,” Rey motions to the weapon clipped to her belt. “You used it once. Saved my life with it.”

“Saved my life” sticks with Finn. He seems to have done an awful lot of life-saving before he forgot it all. The scars on his back and chest tingle. He wonders if the lightsaber is how he got them. 

_A fight in the snow. A dark figure, injured but deadly, stands before him. Off to his side he can see a form, crumpled in the snow. He knows without seeing her face that it is Rey. Anger boils in his stomach. He grips the hilt tightly in his hand and spins around, igniting it. The blue blade sears into the chilly night air._

_“That lightsaber,” the dark figure says, “belongs to me.”_

_Finn stares him down. “Come get it.”_

Finn lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Poe and Rey both stop what they’re doing to look at him, wearing identical expressions of concern.

“Finn? Are you alright?” Rey asks.

Finn is more than alright. He _remembers._ It’s half a shattered memory, barely there, but it is _something._ He looks up, a smile splitting his face. 

“I remember.”


	5. Chapter Five

Rey and Poe are overjoyed when he mentions remembering. They ask him for details, and he knows they want something bigger than the ten seconds he’s got. But when he tells them, they aren’t disappointed. 

“It’s a start,” Poe says. 

“You’ll remember more,” Rey agrees. They are far more optimistic than Finn himself. He is not unhappy with the memory, per se, but he wishes it had shed more light on who he was now. On what had happened to make him forget. On the mystery scream that still has no face. 

Rey was granted leave from her training to help Finn, and while Poe returns to his duties, she wanders with him around the base. She tells him stories, some about himself—they have not known each other very long, he learns—and some about her time on the planet, Jakku, and most about her time with Skywalker. Finn listens rapturously, drinking up every detail. It is doubtful her stories will trigger a memory, but he finds that he likes to hear her talk. 

Rey is assigned quarters on the base for the duration of her visit, but she chooses to stay aboard the _Falcon_. “I need a direct line to Master Skywalker if he needs me.” Apparently, Skywalker had needed some persuading before giving her his blessing to leave. They say goodnight and part. 

Poe, now off duty and looking exhausted, still escorts Finn to his quarters. Finn turns at his doorway, half smiling. “I can find me way home now, I think,” he jokes. In truth he doesn’t mind his friend’s—and they friends, now, or at the very least something more than commanding officer and subordinate—company. 

“Maybe I simply like walking you home,” Poe says. Finn keys open his door and rolls his eyes. 

“This wouldn’t also have to do with me wondering off on Veralt would it?”

“You’re not deployed. Where you go is not up to me.”

“Whatever you say,” Finn says. _Perhaps you should wonder about where I go,_ Finn thinks, remembering his sleepwalking. He has not told anyone yet; with Rey’s arrival, he did not have a chance to return to the infirmary. Sleepwalking seems such a minor issue, but a part of him can’t help but worry that it is a symptom of something bigger. Tomorrow, he thinks. Tomorrow he’ll get it sorted out. “Good night, Poe.”

————

Finn wakes up outside of his quarters once more. This time he is in the main hangar, standing beside a hydraulic lift. The night shift has not noticed his presence; for this Finn is grateful. There is suspicion enough about him. He doesn’t need to give the general any more reason to distrust him. 

Instead of returning to bed, Finn decides to take a walk. If the night before is any indication he will simply wake in the same spot in the hangar in an hour’s time. It’s silly; some sleep is better than no sleep, but the sleepwalking has Finn unnerved. He doesn’t want to wake up outside his bed again. 

He nods to the night crew as he leaves, trying to be as unsuspicious as possible as he walks off the base. This is not a First Order occupied planet. Surely no one will read too far into a man taking a stroll on a calm night. No one stops him, no one gives him a second glance. Still, Finn releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when he reaches the tree line at the edge of the duracrete landing platform. 

His wanders aimlessly through the trees, letting his feet take him where they will. He touches the trunks of the trees as he passes, letting his hand graze over the rough bark. His fingers come away sticky and covered in a fragrant sap. There’s something about the smell…Finn is certain he’s smelled it before. 

His pace quickens. He has a sudden urge to be somewhere. Finn glances skyward, up at the stars twinkling in the navy night. One constellation sticks out at him, a curved line of seven stars pointing south. Finn follows it without knowing why. 

The constellation leads him to a clearing. The trees fall abruptly away, and Finn is at the edge of a large, still lake. The glass-like surface of the water reflects the stars above. And sitting on the shore is someone Finn recognizes. 

“Poe?”

To Finn’s amusement, the other man jumps nearly a foot in the air when his name is called. He whips around, and it _is_ Poe. He’s in sweatpants and a ragged shirt—clearly sleeping attire—and his hair is mussed. Finn isn’t the only one unable to sleep, apparently.

“Finn? What are you doing here?” 

“I went for a walk,” Finn says lamely. He points to the seven-starred constellation. “And I followed that here.”

Poe glances up at the stars and then back at Finn. “You remembered how to get here?”

Is that what that was? A memory? Finn’s feet new exactly the path to take, and following the stars just felt…right. 

“I got here somehow.” Finn crosses the swath of sand that stretches from the underbrush to the edge of the water. Small waves lap lazily at the pale shore. He sits down next to Poe, resting his elbows on his knees. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me, neither.” 

“Bad dreams?”

Poe nods. Finn doesn’t press it. They sit in silence for a while, and Finn gets the feeling that there is something Poe would very much like to say. But he doesn’t, and it is strange, because this is the quietest Poe has been since Finn can remember. Finn doesn’t like this silence, so he asks the question that has been nagging at him for just as long.

“Poe, were we…something more?”

Poe blinks. “What?”

“You and me. Were we together?”

Poe stares at Finn open mouthed before sighing and running a hand over his face. His face is a strange mix of guilt and hurt. “Yeah, we were.”

Finn feels very strange when he hears Poe confirm this. He’d known there was something Poe was keeping for him—his behavior had always been so off for just being Finn’s CO—but to have confirmation that they once were a thing? Knowing how Poe undeniably feels, and Finn unable to even remember Poe, let alone _love_ him, makes his stomach twist. “Why not just tell me?”

“I was going to, but I didn’t want to…pressure you. You’ve got enough to worry about without adding ‘preexisting relationship’ to the mix.”

“And you thought it would be better to keep that from me?”

Poe drops his hands to his lap. The mask of forced happiness he’s worn since Veralt finally drops away, revealing the heartbreak underneath. “Truthfully? I…I don’t know. When Jess told me you didn’t remember anything, I thought ‘no way does he not remember me’. I expected you to recognize me on Veralt, because I couldn’t imagine the alternative. This alternative. I’d be lying if I said my motives were truly selfless. But if it’s hard for me, I know it must be awful for you.”

Finn thinks he probably has a right to be angry, but looking at Poe sitting on the beach, his expression gut wrenchingly broken, he feels pity. Sadness. He wishes, desperately, that in that moment he would remember something. Anything. 

_The corridor is choked with smoke that fills his lungs and steals his breath. Blaster fire peppers the walls behind him. Hexx is there, and so is the scream. Fear swells in his breast when he hears the voice calling his name._

Finn pushes the memory away. He’s tired of remembering the same horrifying moment over and over again. He wants to remember other things, happy things. Good things. 

“Tell me about us,” Finn asks quietly. If he can’t remember, the least he can do is learn. 

Poe sighs and lies back against the sand, arms resting on his stomach. Finn follows suit, staring at the stars twinkling above them. There is so little light pollution on D’Qar, he can make out stars for lightyears; the milky band of the galaxy’s spiral arm cuts a pale swath across the night sky.

At first Finn doesn’t think Poe will talk. They lie quietly next to each other on the sand, the only sound coming from the forest insects. Finn’s mind drifts, and he wonders how many times they’ve lain abreast, simply enjoying the presence of the other. When Poe finally speaks, his voice is quiet. Distant. “After the battle on Starkiller, you were in a coma. They weren’t sure if you’d wake up. And after you woke up, they weren’t sure if you’d walk again. And when you started walking, they were so worried about reopening your injuries that they didn’t let you out of the medical wing for a month. 

“I visited you every day, as often as I could. We talked. Well, mostly I talked. You never wanted to talk about your time with the First Order. But what you did tell me was how much you missed seeing the sky. I knew the moment I met you, you were special. I would have torn the roof off the base myself just to show you the stars.”

“Such devotion,” Finn says with a chuckle, and Poe laughs, too. 

“I know, it’s cheesy. Thankfully it didn’t come to that.” Poe pauses, and his eyes are glassy. “There wasn’t anyone guarding you, keeping you inside. You weren’t a prisoner. So one night, you and I just…snuck out.” He points to the line of seven stars curving through the night. “We call this constellation the Saber. Who knows how many in the Resistance have followed it to this lake; no one mentions the lake, but we all seem to know it’s here. That night, though, it was just us. 

“Staring up at the stars, you finally told me about your times with the First Order. About your missions, about your squadmates. I asked you if you missed any of it, any piece at all. You said there was nothing at all to miss…not like here. And then…”

Poe trails off, his face going still, eyes falling shut. He exhales. Lost in the memory. 

“And then?” Finn prompts, quietly. Poe’s eyes flutter open. Finn can see the Saber reflected in his pupils. 

“You kissed me.” A small smile plays over Poe’s lips. “I swore I wouldn’t rush you into anything, that I’d let you make the first move. But am I glad you made a move that night, because it was getting hard to wait.”

Finn smiles at that, but it’s sad. It’s not hard to realize that, despite himself, Poe was hoping the story would jog some sort of memory, some emotion. That maybe there would be a repeat of their first night together. But Finn feels nothing, remembers nothing. And he hates himself for it. He wants to give Poe something. _Anything._ However small.

“Poe, I have to tell you something,” Finn says softly.

Poe turns his head, voice just as quiet. “Yeah?”

Finn takes a deep breath. “I remember more than I’ve let on. I remember Veralt.”

Poe startles, nearly sits up. “You do?” There is excitement in Poe’s voice. Anxiety, too, as if Poe isn’t sure he wants to hear what happened on the other planet. 

“I don’t remember a lot. But I remember a corridor filled with blaster fire, and I remember Hexx, and the detonators, and running back inside. I was going back for someone.”

Poe’s eyes are intense, staring into Finn’s. “Who?”

The name is on the tip of Finn’s tongue, but he cannot say it. There’s something almost physical holding him back. No matter how much he wants to tell Poe, now, he can’t. His lips won’t form the words. “Someone was screaming for me. I went back for them. And then it goes dark, and I’m waking up in the rain.”

Finn stops and looks at Poe, and waits for the inevitable “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” but it never comes. Poe seems to be mulling it over. 

“And you don’t remember anything else?”

Finn shakes his head. “No, I woke up with that memory and nothing else. At least, not until I saw the stormtrooper. The one with the scar on his face.”

Now Poe looks thoughtful. 

“Do you think…if I somehow got you an audience with that trooper…that you’d remember something?”

“I feel like I might. But what about the general?”

“I’ll handle her. I can be very persuasive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've just kind of given up on a posting schedule, but I know I'm going to post at least once a week. Twice if it's a good writing week. :) I want to thank you all for your support. I read every comment I get. <3 You give me the motivation to keep writing.


	6. Chapter Six

**** The Resistance's interrogation of the stormtroopers captured on Veralt has, so far, been unsuccessful. They have gleaned nothing from the prisoners except their serial numbers, and even that took coaxing. The whole situation in and of itself is a bit perplexing; the Resistance has never managed to take prisoners beforehand, and it’s not hard to guess why. Poe relays how they would comb through a battlefield in the aftermath of a conflict, finding troopers with nary a scratch on their armor but dead nonetheless. The First Order guards their secrets zealously, no matter the cost. 

Poe is using this to their advantage. Even though Finn remembers nothing, nothing but a vague sense of familiarity towards the scarred trooper, Poe has convinced the general to let him see the prisoners. Maybe it’ll jump start Finn's memory, Poe says. Maybe seeing him will make the other troopers talk. It’s worth a shot. 

“I want him under supervision,” General Organa says the next morning, to which Poe volunteers whole-heartedly. She gives her blessing, smiling wryly.

Finn was right, that the prisoners were kept in the south wing. He follows Poe and the two armed Resistance guards General Organa assigned them down a long flight of stairs into the underbelly of the D’Qar base. It gets colder as they walk, and Finn finds himself wondering just how deep underground they are. At last the stairs give way to a short landing, and at the end of it is a thick durasteel door, locked tight. One of the guards punches in a nine digit code on a keypad beside the door, each button press hitting a distinct note. Like music. The durasteel door slides soundlessly open, and a corridor lined with rows and rows of empty cells yawns before them. Poe, Finn, and the guards march purposefully to the very back of the cell block. There they find the stormtroopers. 

The four troopers, three men and a woman, turn their heads as the party approaches. Finn has eyes for only one. The scarred trooper eyes him appraisingly, as though unsure whether or not to be hostile just yet.

_There are four of them. There’s Finn, of course, and Nines—FN-2199, with his shock of red hair and the freckles covering his pale skin. There’s a third face that is still covered in shadow, that he knows but can’t make out, that his memory refuses to focus on. And finally there’s the familiar dark skin and long scar of the trooper in front of him. FN-2000._

“You’re Zeroes,” Finn says. He says the name like he’s known it all along—because he has, Finn realizes. Even back on Veralt it was there, hovering at the edges of his mind. _Zeroes._

Zeroes’ face splits into a smile. It’s not a nice smile, but is instead something wicked. All barbed and sharp and cold. The smile sets Finn on edge. Hostile it is, then.

In the memories that are slowly trickling back, they were…not friends, per se, but _friendly_. They ate together, fought together, slept together. Laughed together. 

_Dark walls all around them, the spaces between filled with stormtroopers in their undersuits. Steam from the freshers leaks into the locker room, milling between the exhausted troopers. Finn wipes the sweat from his brow and feels someone clap him on the back._

_“Nice shooting out there,” Zeroes says, and Finn grins. So rare is it that his team treats him as a member of their group. Usually he is an outsider, an anomaly. But not today. They achieved their objective in the training sims. They had all received top marks from Phasma. They had all performed admirably. Today he is not the outsider. Today he is one of them._

“And you’re the traitor,” Zeroes says, his voice just as icy as his expression. He leans back against the wall of his cell. The warm acceptance of the memory shrinks in on itself, and Finn is brought back to reality. Zeroes’ eyes glint dangerously in the low light of the prison lamps, and Finn has the sudden urge to turn and leave. This doesn’t feel right. 

They never should have come here. He is remembering, yes. But a thought has formed in his mind: _should_ he? He looks at Poe, standing in the curtains by the guards. The other is chewing his lip, watching Finn expectantly. Their eyes meet and Poe’s brows pull together. He seems to read the emotions hovering just under Finn’s skin.

Finn shoves the uneasy feeling aside. _Yes_ , he should remember. He is desperate to know who he is, and just as desperate to put a face to the screaming voice that follows him like a bad dream. Zeroes can help him do that. This is necessary. Finn squares his shoulders. 

“I remember you,” he says. 

Zeroes barks a laugh. “Am I all you remember? How sad. You were so eager to betray your brothers for this lot. A pity they are strangers to you.”

A retort sits on Finn’s tongue, but that’s not why he’s here. He swallows it. “Who am I?”

Something flickers in Zeroes’ face—surprise, maybe? He clearly didn’t expect such a straightforward question. He recovers quickly, his wolfish expression quickly concealing the shock. 

“You,” the stormtrooper says, leaning forward. His face is so close to the energy bars it nearly touches them. “You are FN-2187, a coward. Phasma’s golden boy turned a filthy rebel. You are the reason our corps is dead.”

_Dead._ The word settles on Finn’s shoulder like a wet blanket, weighing him down. Zeroes’ words in and of themselves are not troubling; Finn knew he betrayed the First Order. Finn knew he abandoned everything to save Rey, to save Poe. But it is the memories that Zeroes’ words bring. There are many of them, short snippets, flitting by too fast to grab. But he feels the emotion of them, the uncertainty. The fear. The _pain._

_Dead_.

Finally, a memory sticks.

_It’s chaos around him. Blaster fire—real, this time, not some hologram that will pass harmlessly through him—sears through the air. He smells smoke and ozone and sweat inside his helmet, and there’s fear. He’s never felt fear before, but he feels it now._

It’s just like the sims, _he tells himself, but it is little comfort. The villagers are fighting back, and he’s ducking beside his cadre, finding cover where he can. They are keeping it together—_

_And then suddenly they aren’t, the enemy fire gets through, and the trooper at his side falls. Someone screams in his helmet, and_ oh _. Finn knows that scream. He remembers it from Veralt. He remembers it here, on this battlefield. The scream is cut short by a wet squelching noise, the sound of someone choking on blood. At his side, a trooper—his friend, his_ brother, _whom he knows but cannot name—drops to the sand._

_Finn kneels over him, his heart pounding in his ears, bile rising in his throat. His brother lifts a hand, a plea, begging for help, and then it falls listlessly, lifelessly, to the ground, leaving streaks of blood across Finn’s visor._

Finn comes back to himself with a gasp. Poe is standing in front of him, arms on his shoulders, worry written in every line on his face. 

“Are you okay?”

Finn looks beyond him to see Zeroes, smiling smugly despite the bars that hold him in. He needs to leave. He shouldn’t have come here to begin with. Poe sees this in Finn’s eyes and steers him away from the trooper, back down the prison corridor. 

“It’s fine,” he is saying, reassuring Finn, but Finn knows it’s not. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s made a huge mistake…he just wishes he could remember _what_. 

————

He realizes his mistake that night, when he wakes up alone and staring at the prison’s durasteel door. The keypad beside it glows green, indicating that the correct code has been punched in. Finn’s blood turns to ice in his veins. He knows he keyed it in. 

_Tomorrow,_ he tells himself. Tomorrow he will tell them about the sleep walking. Tomorrow comes. Finn tells no one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter this week; I'm sorry it's so short. They should be getting longer, but it was a slow writing week this week. Thank you again for the comments and encouragement! <3 <3 <3


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for this late post! It's been a hectic week. I will try to keep to my one chapter a week schedule, but classes start up on Monday so we'll see. <3

**** There is an unofficial club on the D’Qar base, known as the Rebel’s Banner. During the day it serves as an alternative to the regular cafeteria fare and military rations, and during the night it is a cantina where Resistance personnel can blow off steam after their shifts. However, on occasion, when just the right shipment comes in, when just the right news hits the circuit, it becomes the spot to be. Word has gotten around that a crate of Ithorian Mist has just been brought in. Tonight, the Resistance celebrates. 

After Finn’s encounter with Zeroes, he does not feel much up for celebrating. He has spent all day trying to quell the anxiety in his stomach. 

“I shouldn’t have gone down there,” he says. But Rey and Poe refuse to let him dwell on his fear.

“Just look at all that you remembered,” Rey points out. Finn winces. Not long after the “interrogation” Finn had relayed to them, in bits and pieces, all that he’d remembered. Every memory had been of a time before he’d known Poe and Rey. There were flashes of his time as a young cadet, snippets of being a young teenager on sanitation duty, moments of his short time as a “real” stormtrooper serving a fascist regime. Nines and Zeroes and Mystery Trooper Number Four are in all of them. In the moment they were good memories; looking back, they make Finn feel ill. 

“They aren’t good memories, though,” he protests.

“But maybe you’ve started something. Now that you remember small pieces, the rest’ll start to fall into place,” Poe says. 

Finn shrugs. “Maybe…”

“What you need is something to take your mind of this. Don’t try to force anything. Let it come naturally,” Rey reasons, linking her arm with Finn’s. Finn opens his mouth to protest, but Poe cuts him off, nodding in agreement with Rey.

“And in the mean time,” he says, taking Finn’s other arm, “you can have a little fun.”

There is no arguing with them. And truth be told, Finn’s only plans for the night were to return to his quarters and try to tease out just what had gone wrong, while also keeping himself awake to avoid any more bouts of sleepwalking. Maybe he’s trying too hard. Maybe he does need to distract himself. 

“Okay,” he relents, and the three of them head off to the Banner. 

Finn, Rey, and Poe arrive just as the party is picking up. Someone has set up a dance floor made of old crate lids and lit by strobing floodlights. Shards of colored transparisteel hang from wires drilled into the ceiling; the light dances off them, sending a cascade of flickering multicolored light to the ground. The Mist flows freely, and someone puts a drink in Finn’s hand. He sniffs at the liquor and wrinkles his nose; it smells _strong_. 

From what Finn remembers of his past, he has had very little experience with alcohol. Stormtroopers wouldn’t have been allowed to imbibe, and Finn had only been with the Resistance for a few months before his memories deserted him—hardly long enough to be introduced to what was contraband most of his life. 

“You’re supposed to drink it,” Poe teases him with a smile, and nudges his arm. Finn takes a sip and winces. The burn is even worse than he imagined. Poe laughs at his expression. 

“You don’t sip it. Just toss it back, all at once.”

Finn does as he’s told and ends up gagging. The whiskey burns all the way down, but the warmth that spreads outward is not unpleasant, and the oaky aftertaste is surprisingly tasty. He decides then that he likes whiskey.

“Another?” Rey holds two shots in her hand and offers one to Finn. He takes it, clinks their glasses together and throws it back. The second one is easier to down than the first. 

“Atta’ boy!” Poe claps Finn on the back. 

“Are we sure you’re not a pilot?” Jess wonders, approaching the group with a beer in her hand. “You sure drink like one.”

Finn grins. “With these two for friends, I’m sure it won’t be long until one of them convinces me to learn.”

Laughter echoes all around. More Mist is poured. Finn likes how it makes him feel—warm and floaty, like he’s dancing on clouds. His worries are pushed to the back of his mind and the knot of anxiety in his belly untwists and dissipates to nothing. In the glow of the Mist Finn forgets the voice, the sleepwalking, the fear that something is wrong. He is finally allowed to unwind for the first time in recent memory. He relishes in the lightness now that the burden is lifted off his shoulders. 

The lights are bright and the music is loud, but it all slows around him as he drinks. People move in slow motion, dancing to the beat at half speed. The music is muffled and distant, the lights and the sights are blurry and out of focus. But Rey and Poe are sharp against the background noise, smiles bright and eyes blown wide with exhilaration. Rey has her head thrown back in laughter, and Poe…the lights glisten on his skin and his dark curls and Finn is sure, in that moment, that he has never met anyone more beautiful, more bursting with life. Even in his lost memories there has never seen someone so… _there._

It’s the liquor, he thinks, warping his perception. He’s giddy. But a part of him knows it’s more. Perhaps he’s finally starting to remember something _good_. 

Swept up in the moment, Finn grabs Rey’s hand. She pauses, surprised, then smiles at him and squeezes his fingers. Poe is reaching for his other hand, but Finn wants more than that. Without hesitation he leans in and presses his lips to Poe’s. It is like fireworks when skin meets skin. The other man readily kisses him back, hand curving against the small of Finn’s back. Finn hears Rey whoop in the background, and suddenly all of the bar patrons around them are calling and egging them on. 

_A black X Wing sits on the tarmac, a droid rushes past him to its master nearly knocking Finn over. He catches sight of Poe and feels his heart swell, then breaks into a run that ends with them colliding, dancing around each other._

_“That’s my jacket,” Poe says, and Finn hurries to shrug it off. “No, no…keep it.” Poe pulls it over Finn’s shoulders. “It suits you_. _”_

The kiss ends. Poe pulls back, his eyes locking with Finn’s. Finn gasps, overwhelmed by the memory. Poe and Rey were right; he just needed to let things happen.

“I remember us,” he breathes against Poe’s lips. Poe’s laughter is like music to Finn’s ears. He touches his forehead to Poe’s, twines their fingers together. 

“Shall I leave you two alone?” Rey asks, voice light.

“No!” Finn holds her hand tighter. He needs her close, needs both of them close. He cannot believe he ever forgot them. He doesn’t want to lose them now. “No.”

The three of them dance, hand in hand, until the club lights darken and the bartendersays, “Last call!” And then they are staggering out the doors together, leaning against one another. The crowd disperses to all corners of the base, some fast, some slow, but eventually it is just them. 

Finn’s head hurts, but it is nothing he can’t handle. A headache, he guesses, brought on by the lights and the noise and the drink. But he is with friends. He can ignore the pain. 

Rey and Poe are laughing.

“What if—what if I commed Master Skywalker, right here. What if I gave him my status update right now. Just…just let him know about things.” Rey slurs. Finn gets the distinct impression Master Skywalker might not approve of her drinking.

Poe snickers. “Let him know about what?”

“Everything!” Rey gestures wildly and loses her balance, nearly dragging Poe and Finn down with her. Finn snorts. 

“I thought the Jedi were supposed to be graceful,” Finn jokes.

“I am graceful,” Rey asserts as she attempts to pick herself up. But she is off balance and her legs give out. She tumbles back down to the ground. Poe and Finn each grab one of her hands and attempt to haul her to her feet, but their balance is just as poor as hers. They all end up in a heap on the ground, laughing drunkenly. A cool breeze has picked up. It dries the sweat on Finn’s forehead.

The D’Qar night is gorgeous and quiet. Stars stud a shimmering navy sky, occasionally blotted out by the thick planetary ring that encircles the planet. The Saber cuts through the heavens, bright and sharp. Insects hum in the forest and the breeze ruffles the leaves of the trees. Finn wants to capture every detail. He needs more good memories to replace those he’s lost. 

They bask in the warm night, just enjoying each other’s company. Finn’s headache is still there, an annoying pain at his periphery. It is becoming harder to ignore. 

“But in all seriousness,” Poe says at last, “you should call Skywalker.”

This sets off a round of quiet laughter. Rey leans back, tilting her head towards the sky. “Oh no, I already shared a bottle of Corvani rum with Chewie on Ahch’to. I think he’d order me back if I called.”

Poe huffs a laugh. “Can’t afford any more slip ups?”

_Slip ups._ All at once Finn’s headache blossoms into a migraine. He gasps, leaning forward and putting his head in his hands. 

“Finn?” 

He can’t tell who is calling his name. The pain is so sudden, so bright, so intense. He presses the palms of his hands against his eyes but he can still see a bright light spreading like wildfire across his field of vision. It feels like a knife is splitting his skull, slowly sawing it open. He is all at once aware of someone screaming. 

_Slip? I have to get to—_

_I have to—_

_Have to get—_

He can’t complete the thought. The pain crashes over him like a wave and suddenly it stops, leaving him gasping for breath. He opens his eyes and it is wonderfully, blessedly dark. There are insects chirping in the trees, and a cool breeze ruffles his jacket. Before him are two people—a man and a woman, staring at him with worried expressions. 

“Finn?” the man asks. 

He blinks. “Who is Finn?”


	8. Chapter EIght

 

They tell him his name is Finn. They tell him he has lost his memory before. 

“It came back last time,” they say. But then it vanished again and left him feeling hollow, empty. Unreal. Unmade. 

The woman is Rey and the man is Poe, and neither have left his side as long as he can remember. Which is about three hours. They draw his blood, scan his brain, ask him questions about what he remembers and what he doesn’t. 

“Do you remember anything at all?” the medic asks, and Finn is surprised to realize he does. He looks to Rey and Poe. 

“Who was screaming?” 

They exchange glances. 

“The first thing I remember. Someone was screaming. Who was it?”

“Finn, no one was screaming.”

But no, Finn distinctly remembers a scream. 

_Blaster bolts pummel the wall behind him, missing him by mere millimeters. Storm-troopers are closing in. There’s a man in green and tan, reaching out to him._

_“The detonators are set. We have to go, Finn.”_

_Through the wail of weapons’ fire Finn hears someone calling for him. Someone who isn’t in green and tan. Someone he knows. Someone he will not leave behind…not again._

_“Slip!” A spike of terror arcs through him, and Finn turns and runs._

Finn comes back to himself. “I think I remember something…but I don’t know what it is. A battle. Someone screaming.”

“You’ve mentioned this memory before. Did you see a corridor filled with blaster fire?” Poe asks. Finn nods. 

“Well this is good, yeah? It’s a start. You’ll remember more in time,” Rey says, trying to be positive. Finn appreciates her. 

The medic comes back into the waiting room, holopad in hand. She looks discouraged. “So I have some goods news and some bad news. What do we want first?”

“Good news,” Finn blurts out, because all his recent memories are bad. He could use some good. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you that we can detect. You’re healthy.”

This doesn’t strike Finn as good news. “Doesn’t that mean you can’t help me regain my memory?”

“Well, yes. And that leads us to the bad news is. We did find something…off.” She flicks her finger against the holopad and suddenly there are holograms floating in the air before her. They are brain scans, two of them, side by side. They both look drastically different. The gyri and sulci rise and fall in different patterns on each scan. The scans are the same shape, but the patterns do not match.

“This is your brain.”

Finn’s brows pull together. “Both of them?” 

The medic nods. Poe and Rey look equally confused. 

“They don’t look alike…at all.” Rey comments. The medic points to her. 

“Exactly. This scan—“ she points to the one on the right, “—we took right after you returned from Veralt. And this scan—” she points to the one on the left, “—was taken minutes ago. And this scan—” the medic swipes upward again, and a third brain scan appears in the air. It also looks completely different from the other two. “—this was taken after you returned from Starkiller base. As you can see, none of them are the same. The entire cerebral cortex has been rearranged.”

“So what does this mean?” Poe wants to know. The medic bites her cheek. 

“We aren’t sure. We suspect that the reason Finn cannot remember anything is not so much that the memories are gone, but that the brain does not know where to find them. The memories aren’t where they are supposed to be.”

“But I do remember something,” Finn says. “It’s specific. I’ve told them about the memory before, apparently.”

“It’s possible that is the pivotal moment. It could be the epicenter of whatever is going on in your mind right now. But exactly why this is happening we don’t know.”

The pivotal event was on Veralt, Finn is sure. He’s remembering the same moment over and over, the moment where he decided to sacrifice himself for….someone. 

But what significance does that moment in particular have? Finn has gone up against the First Order before. If what he’s been told is to be believed, he went so far as to infiltrate Starkiller base with the express purpose of saving Rey. He is no stranger to reckless missions to save his friends. So why Veralt? What makes it so special?

It must be his lost week, Finn thinks. The week Poe says he was missing during the mission on Veralt. There’s no other explanation. The First Order did something to him. But _what_ they did remains a mystery. An unpleasant feeling starts to build in his stomach. 

“It has to be the First Order,” Rey’s thoughts echo Finn’s own. Beside her, Poe shifts. His expression changes, from worried to angry. There’s something dark in it, something…dangerous. 

“I’ll be right back,” he says, and turns abruptly out of the infirmary. 

“Poe?” Rey follows him, and Finn follows her. He knows exactly where Poe is going, somehow. 

Poe crosses the Resistance base, enters the south wing, and storms through a maze of hallways with Rey and Finn hot on his heels. They reach a reinforced durasteel door and Poe punches in a code on the keypad. The melody of the keys sticks in Finn’s mind. Poe is oblivious to Finn and Rey behind him, wholly focused on his task. The thick blast door slides open and Poe enters. They are in a prison: rows and rows of uninhabited cells stretch before them. But they aren’t all empty. 

Poe stops before one cell in particular, its energy bars humming softly in the still room. There’s a man there, a stormtrooper, a long scar running down the side of his face. Finn knows him. _Zeroes_ , he thinks. Without hesitation Poe deactivates the energy bars keeping him contained and grabs Zeroes by his collar, hauling him up until they are nose to nose. 

“What did you do to him?” he snarls in Zeroes’ face. The stormtrooper blinks innocently.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists. Poe has no patience. With a grunt, he slams the stormtrooper against the duracrete wall of his cell. Zeroes’ head snaps forward with a sickening crack. 

“Poe!” Rey shouts, trying to break his spell. Poe ignores her. Finn can only watch. 

“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” Poe says. Zeroes shakes his head, trying to clear it, and fails to answer Poe in enough time. Poe bashes Zeroes against the wall again and bites out every word of his question. “What. Did. You. Do. To. Him?”

Now Zeroes smiles, a menacing smirk twisting his lips, and he spits blood directly in Poe’s face. The pilot’s expression goes dark with rage and he cocks his fist, ready to beat the answer he wants out of prisoner. Rey catches his hand in time. 

“This isn’t how we’re doing this, Poe,” she tells him as he tries to shake her off.

“They hurt Finn,” is all he can say, and it looks like Rey might not be able to hold him off. But then comes the sound of running footsteps, and Resistance personnel are suddenly swarming Poe, pulling him off Zeroes, tossing the stormtrooper back in his cell and reactivating the bars. Poe struggles against the arms restraining him. He’s shouting now, telling them to let him go— _ordering_ them to let him go. 

“That’s enough, Commander!” a sharp voice cuts through the noise, and the fight leaves Poe all at once. A woman with her grey hair knotted at the base of her neck strides into view. Finn steps aside to let her pass. All the excitement has given him a headache. 

_Blaster fire scorches past him. Stormtroopers surround him. A man in green and tan holds his hand outstretched._

_“We have to go, Finn.”_

_A scream cuts through the chaos._

_“Slip!” Finn cries, and turns back into the fray._

The woman is dressing Poe down, voice even but stern. Poe looks more exhausted than angry now. Rey is making herself as small as possible. Finn turns to Zeroes, blood running from his mouth. He has questions, and Poe seems to think the stormtrooper has answers. 

“Who is Slip?” Finn asks aloud, and everyone suddenly goes silent. The woman pauses mid sentence and Poe stares at Finn, eyes wide. Finn has to force the words past his mouth, and they still come out clipped and slurred. But they are there, hovering in space. Finn’s headache blossoms. It’s suddenly a struggle to stand upright. 

Zeroes looks at Finn for half a second before saying, “The one you left behind.”

And Finn doesn’t understand the answer, but he isn’t worried about that now. All at once it feels like a steel spike is being driven between his eyes, slowly. Deliberately. The pain is overwhelming and black fog creeps at the edges of his vision. He fights to stay awake, but in the end darkness claims him. He collapses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....so I may have forgotten about this. It's my senior year of uni and things got intense. I hope I'll be able to finish this before classes start back up in January. I'm so sorry for falling off the face of the Earth!


End file.
